DIPLO: GoW comments

[Aeson]

What is iron going to be worth to GoW anyway?

I can't see them surviving till GunPowder (and they don't have all that great of terrain for Saltpeter) without it.

[zeit]

About 1)- i just don't like the thought of having to go to war on someone elses terms. We can't tell if and when Vox will attack GoW- and what is an attack anyway? only settling near the borders? i hardly believe we would accept it- again this would create disappointment in GoW- raising and discussing this idea when we are sure to reject it in the end.

I'm also against a tech research trio- too difficult to control, and too vulnerable, even in chemistry it is well known- a cyclic molecule made from three core atoms is alot less stable than a linear one made from two... I'd be against anything set in stone right now, though the option of gpt for tech might work, but will have to be negotiated in the future.

I also don't think GoW will pay that much for Iron- its a backup source for them, but i'll ask them about it nonetheless.

[Aeson]

Are we sure it's a backup source for them? ND seems to have both the sources in the area tied up. I think GoW is Ironless, and unless ND takes pity on them, they will have to look for it elsewhere.

[nbarclay]

If we and Lego (and maybe Vox) try to go in a tech partnership that squeezes all three Bobian civs out, that could easily push the three of them together. I'm far from convinced that we could win that race, especailly with at least two of the Bobian civs having at least one library each if I'm interpreting the culture graph correctly. (I'm guessing Vox is the other civ that's ahead of us in Literacy Rate.) But if we, Lego, and a Bobian civ team up, we can almost certainly pull ahead of the other two Bobian civs.

Nathan

[alva]

2) Tech alliance with GoW? worth discussing IMO.

They buy tech grom us and only from us at a very low price and can't trade it.

What is iron going to be worth to GoW anyway?

survival...

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alva

They buy tech grom us and only from us at a very low price and can't trade it.

The problem is that half the tech we'll get will come from Lego. That means that any reasonable deal with Lego would need to let them in on that aspect. (And an unreasonable deal could make a mess of our efforts to leverage a tech partnership with Lego over the long haul.)

[alva]

That means that any reasonable deal with Lego would need to let them in on that aspect.

Of course,
So, we give half of the profit to Lego...

[DeepO]

libraries / culture: I'm far from convinced there are 2 libraries out there, that culture graph looks like a couple of temples to me. Maybe ND has 1 temple + 1 lib, and maybe RP has built one, but I doubt it. The F11 graph is hardly to be trusted when it comes to literacy, in the Euro game I'm at 29%, and I have yet to build my first library (except the great one, of course)

One thing is obvious: we should not attack ND before doing something about our culture, and also Vox is becoming problematic. Culture Flipping is becoming a serious risk fast.

GoW tech deal: please, no alliance, in which we promise to sell them everything. I know it will make the deal on GoW's side a lot easier to get, but it will create tons of problems with other tech suppliers. With Lego in on this, we might be able to strike such a deal, but again, no 3-way deal (no stable cyclic 3-atom molecules either, even if I smiled a bit at the comparison, as stable cyclic 4-atom molecules don't really exist either ), only a bunh of 2 way deals. And in this case, I suggest we first negotiate a common price tag on techs with Lego, and share profits if possible.

Iron: if they have no iron at all, it will be invaluable to them, but only if they akeep enough of a tresaury to upgrade horsies to riders. Those riders are the problem, of course, if we are the ones trading iron, and GoW uses it to declare war on ND, I doubt that ND will like us afterwards. Even if no war gets declared, our image with the other Bobians might fall anyway, so we need adequate compensation from it

As to 1): I still feel that we should find out exactly how much they value our protection against Vox, although I agree that we should say that we are not interested in becoming pure mercenaries, so if it clashes with our goals, we can't honorably do it.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Re: selling Feudalism to GoW:
I suggest that we announce to GoW that the rumors are true, and that we can make them the first civ in the game to acquire Feudalism after us, in just 8 turns or less (is this prediction correct?), for as little as 12 gpt. Additionally, we can increase our research rate and chop a few more turns off of our ETA of Feudalism; if GoW would be willing to pay, the price would be one additional gpt per every turn (e.g. if we deliver Feudalism in 6 turns, by putting ourselves into a deficit, GoW will have to pay 14 gpt instead of 12 gpt).
(I'd add something along the lines of "while your neighbours will be just crawling out of anarchy, you would already be ready to upgrade your units to Pikemen and Medieval Infantry, and be the first on Bob with the ability to research Chivalry)

What do you think of this?

[zeit]

GoW paying us with gpt would be an easier pill for them to swallow- but paying 240 gold for a tech might be hard for the GoW, who are used to ground-level tech prices. But there's no harm in trying.

We'd like to include a NDA, or not?

[Shiber]

Good point. Let's throw in an NDA of 5 turns into this deal; we can also offer GoW to get an exclusivity of 10 turns for, say, 4 additional gpt.
As for the price: it isn't too terrible. In fact, 240 is 31.25% of the first-researcher cost! IMHO we should mention that when we bring up the price.

[DeepO]

keep in mind that you essentially offering them a loan. If you would take 25% as a reasonable interest rate for lending money for 20 turns, you would get 200 gold for the tech, not 240 (as 40 would be interest)

That's a decent price, I think, but I wonder if they would go for it.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Now that RP is interested too (and ND might be interested as well), perhaps we should just offer each party Feudalism in 8 or 7 turns (Aeson, could you please provide a more accurate assumption on when we could get Feudalism, assuming that we continue at the current research pace?) for a uniform price. How does 12 gpt sound?
If one of the parties would refuse to accept our price and ask for a lower price, we could tell them that this is the same price we are offering to every civ that we'll sell Feudalism to - they'll realize that if they refuse, their neighbours will have Feudalism many turns before they will and take our proposal.

[DeepO]

Could be a good idea... if we get 4 such interested parties, we would get some 800 gold out of Feudalism... not bad at all, that's more then we could gain by saving up cash in those 8 or so turns we'll need to complete the tech.

However, if a few of the teams won't go for such a price, saving cash would be better...

DeepO

[DeepO]

dp